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10 Dec 2016 3:51:56pm

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Palestine is called Palestine because of the Romans. After a failed Jewish revolt against Roman rule in the second century CE they named the region "Syria Palaestina". This region does not correspond exactly to modern Palestine. It didn't contain the Negev but it did contain some areas east of the Jordan river. The Romans named it after the Philistines who had disappeared from history some six hundred years before. The Philistines lived in what is today the southern Mediterranean coast of modern Palestine. They may have spoken an Indo-European language.